


Sick Day

by ami_ven



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsheplets, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e10-e11 The Return, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 03:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ami_ven/pseuds/ami_ven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sheppard!  Are you still alive in here?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> written for LJ community "mcsheplets" prompt #125 "lazy"

John was pretty sure it was a hallucination when he heard his apartment door bang open, and a familiar voice call, “Sheppard! Are you still alive in here?”

He pulled the blankets over his head, curling in on himself. He hadn’t thought he was sick enough to be delusional, but he supposed he must be.

“Sheppard!” said the voice again, closer this time. There was a crash and a string of muffled curses— could hallucinations trip over things? The crashes (and the cursing) got closer, then stopped.

John peeked out from under his blankets, and there he was, standing in the bedroom doorway. John frowned. He could admit to himself that if he was hallucinating, this would be exactly who he’d imagine, but he wasn’t sure even his feverish subconscious could come up with that combination of green-striped t-shirt, orange plaid button-down and faded blue hoodie.

“Rodney?” he croaked. “You’re real?”

“Of course I’m—” Rodney scowled, stomping over to put his hand against John’s forehead. “You feel warm. Sheppard, are you seeing things? I _told_ Carson you’d never take the day off unless you were practically dying…”

“Rodney?” John asked again. He should probably have worried about why Rodney was telling Carson anything— or vice versa— but his brain was still kind of stuck on Rodney really being there. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Nevada.”

“I’m making sure you’re not dead!” the physicist snapped. “Carson called and told me you’d taken a sick day, and I… I got worried, okay? You never get sick.”

John freed one arm from his mass of blankets and caught Rodney’s hand. “I’m not dying,” he said. “I just didn’t feel like going into work like this.”

Saying it out loud, it sounded stupid, but Rodney just squeezed his hand and plopped down onto the bed beside John’s hip. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I know what you mean. It’s harder to achieve feats of scientific genius when the only consequence of failure is explaining to General What’s-His-Name why I fried the power grid. Again.”

Somewhere in there, Rodney’s free hand had begun carding through John’s hair, and he leaned into the touch. He hadn’t realized that the congestion and coughing had given him a headache until it started to fade. “How long can you stay?” he asked, hesitantly. 

“As long as you need me to,” said Rodney, squeezing John’s hand again. Then, he added, “Besides, it’ll take more than one person to clean up this pig-sty you call an apartment.”

He started to get up, presumably to start decontaminating the room, but John pulled him back down. “Later,” he said. “Nap first.”

“This place is a giant germ factory,” Rodney protested, even as he pulled off his shoes and settled in. “And you should be drinking fluids, or something.”

“Later,” John repeated, tugging Rodney down to lie beside him. “You can make me soup when we wake up.”

“In your dreams, Sheppard,” said Rodney, but they both knew he would.

THE END


End file.
